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[W: 111] Charlton Heston was right

Nickyjo

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Here follows a quasi-hysterical rant.

There is a photo and story in my local paper, the SF Chronicle, today. "Putin stirs nuclear war fears with alert," says the front page headline. Inside, the story continues with a photo and an account of medics trying in vain to revive a 6-year old girl injured in the shelling in Ukraine. One doc looked at a camera recording the scene and said, "show this to Putin." Indeed, and show it to Tucker Carlson as well. The article and picture brought several things to my mind. First was what a midieval Pope said to war mongers of his day, that "not even the beasts of the forest form in battle array." The other was the old 1960s poster, which read, "war is not healthy for children and other living things." But mostly the story made me recall the ending of the first "Planet of the Apes" film, when the Charlton Heston character discovers that he was on earth all the time, and the apes with whom he fought were right to treat humans like the beasts we often are. His coming upon the wreckage of the Statue of Liberty on a beach lets him know where he is and what has happened. The final words are "Damn them. God damn them to hell."

 
And yet my thread on how the most important lesson of this crisis is the need to eliminate nuclear weapons got basically no response.
 
And yet my thread on how the most important lesson of this crisis is the need to eliminate nuclear weapons got basically no response.

I feel like you guys aren't serious about havin' a good time.
 
And yet my thread on how the most important lesson of this crisis is the need to eliminate nuclear weapons got basically no response.
Putin's recent nuclear saber rattling may change that.
 
Putin's recent nuclear saber rattling may change that.
Yet I haven't seen one word on the topic outside my post except a post from Ataraxia. It may have been one of the topics raises in the article I posted about that seemed to get no actual discussion.
 
And yet my thread on how the most important lesson of this crisis is the need to eliminate nuclear weapons got basically no response.
Eliminating nuclear weapons is on of the reasons Ukraine is under attack right now.
 
Eliminating nuclear weapons is on of the reasons Ukraine is under attack right now.
That's a misunderstanding of the topic. I'm talking about universal elimination, not unilateral.
 
It is, despite big obstacles. In fact, it's our official policy.

It's a textbook example of trying to get the genie back in the bottle. We need to focus our efforts on rendering nukes ineffective, not wasting time on what is never going to happen
 
Here follows a quasi-hysterical rant.

There is a photo and story in my local paper, the SF Chronicle, today. "Putin stirs nuclear war fears with alert," says the front page headline. Inside, the story continues with a photo and an account of medics trying in vain to revive a 6-year old girl injured in the shelling in Ukraine. One doc looked at a camera recording the scene and said, "show this to Putin." Indeed, and show it to Tucker Carlson as well. The article and picture brought several things to my mind. First was what a midieval Pope said to war mongers of his day, that "not even the beasts of the forest form in battle array." The other was the old 1960s poster, which read, "war is not healthy for children and other living things." But mostly the story made me recall the ending of the first "Planet of the Apes" film, when the Charlton Heston character discovers that he was on earth all the time, and the apes with whom he fought were right to treat humans like the beasts we often are. His coming upon the wreckage of the Statue of Liberty on a beach lets him know where he is and what has happened. The final words are "Damn them. God damn them to hell."



Great movie! And Heston's girlfriend in that movie is amazing.
 
And yet my thread on how the most important lesson of this crisis is the need to eliminate nuclear weapons got basically no response.

Basically no response because there's no way to achieve that.
If you think there's a way to eliminate nuclear weapons, by all means please share because from what I can tell, that's like wishing
we could all have a pony.

I saw the thread, I read it.
And I shook my head slowly without even realizing it...a reflex to impossible wishes.
 
It's a textbook example of trying to get the genie back in the bottle. We need to focus our efforts on rendering nukes ineffective, not wasting time on what is never going to happen
You're misguided on this.

Let's start with your genie back in the bottle. Then I guess we should abandon all non-proliferation efforts, and just accept that everyone in the world can have nukes, right? The genie is out of the bottle, no containment can be done.

No, there is nothing preventing the world from eliminating nuclear weapons I know of. There are great obstacles to it, but it can be done.

Second, you can't prove it's possible to render them effective; and you can't predict what happens if we try. Remember when the US threat to do so raised tensions to threats of using nuclear weapons before they became useless? Who's to say a country doesn't develop that technology and then become a tyrant over the world as the sole nuclear power? That's why Reagan promised to share it, however hollow the promise.

We can make a case for doing both - trying to eliminate them and develop counter-measures supposedly given to the word. But trying to eliminate them is a good idea.
 
Basically no response because there's no way to achieve that.
If you think there's a way to eliminate nuclear weapons, by all means please share because from what I can tell, that's like wishing
we could all have a pony.

I saw the thread, I read it.
And I shook my head slowly without even realizing it...a reflex to impossible wishes.
What's missing from your post is any rational argument about why it's not possible. Man invented them. Man limits their proliferation. And man can eliminate them.
 
You're misguided on this.

Let's start with your genie back in the bottle. Then I guess we should abandon all non-proliferation efforts, and just accept that everyone in the world can have nukes, right? The genie is out of the bottle, no containment can be done.

No, there is nothing preventing the world from eliminating nuclear weapons I know of. There are great obstacles to it, but it can be done.

Second, you can't prove it's possible to render them effective; and you can't predict what happens if we try. Remember when the US threat to do so raised tensions to threats of using nuclear weapons before they became useless? Who's to say a country doesn't develop that technology and then become a tyrant over the world as the sole nuclear power? That's why Reagan promised to share it, however hollow the promise.

We can make a case for doing both - trying to eliminate them and develop counter-measures supposedly given to the word. But trying to eliminate them is a good idea.

I think you are missing the logic from the scenario. The advantage a country would have if they were the only ones to have a nuke is emense so much so that whatever threats or punishments for having them could not counteract the power of having one. MAD is a much more stable alternative than the secret nukes a non-proliferation treaty would create
 
What's missing from your post is any rational argument about why it's not possible. Man invented them. Man limits their proliferation. And man can eliminate them.

They say politics is the art of the possible.
With all good intentions I suggest that if this is YOUR position ("we must eliminate nuclear weapons") then it falls to you to explain how such an undertaking would
come to pass.
I'd love to support any effort in that direction but there's still .... what... another dozen or so countries you have to convince.
 
They say politics is the art of the possible.
With all good intentions I suggest that if this is YOUR position ("we must eliminate nuclear weapons") then it falls to you to explain how such an undertaking would
come to pass.
I'd love to support any effort in that direction but there's still .... what... another dozen or so countries you have to convince.

When you use quote marks, you should use accurate quotations, I didn't use the word "must" here, and your doing that begs a semantic discussion about 'benefits', 'need', and 'must' and so on.

Must we? Well, if the world is destroyed tomorrow, it's rather hard to argue otherwise. Does the risk of it being destroyed make it a must? I'm not raising that semantic topic. The issue here is my saying it is important that we try.

Here's a funny thing. Other countries are *easy* to convince, because the US and Russia have 90% of the nukes. THEY are much safer in a nuke free world. China would love to see their conventional advantages become more powerful; they can't win a nuclear war. This is why every country is in agreement to 'officially' support their elimination.

The bottom line is the politics and the practicality of enforcement. As I understand we have the technology for enforcing the ban. If there's a good case otherwise, I would say that is a valid reason preventing it.
 
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